Letters to the Editor: March 11, 2018

The Vindicator is exactly right – steel tariffs are a long overdue crackdown on Chinese cheating that has devastated communities like Youngstown (“President should implement steel and aluminum tariffs” ( March 7).

The sky-is-falling crowd wants to call this a trade war. But trade enforcement is not a trade war – it’s finally fighting back against the cheating in the steel industry that we have allowed for far too long. And the fact that some folks in Washington are confused about this is just proof that we haven’t fought back nearly often enough and hard enough against the countries that break the rules and cost Ohio jobs.

If we fail to stand up for steel jobs today, China will come after other jobs up and down the supply chain tomorrow.

Sherrod Brown, Cleveland

Democrat Sherrod Brown is Ohio’s senior U.S. senator.

High wages, not imports, at root of US economic ills

Executives of Alumi- num companies talk about leveling the playing field with tariffs on imports.

But that doesn’t work due to the huge wage disparity between our trade-partner states and the U.S.

That continues to be ignored with the push for a $15 per hour minimum wage, which in some Second and Third World trade countries is or exceeds a week’s pay. Where are the union organizers in those countries?

This continuing hourly wage increase also continues to kill the recovery of manufacturers in the U.S. by increasing the existing wage disparity/unit cost and our competitive position in any market.

Some of the latest tax changes have helped, but we need more commonsense math corrections. Please listen and take action to correct before we become one of them versus a world leader.

My 87th birthday has passed, but I still try to get out and do things on occasion. Last Sunday it was the big health-care expo at the Covelli Centre.

Getting there and scanning the exhibits presented no obstacles, but I couldn’t find my car in the massive parking lot afterward.

An hour spent walking up and down the rows was futile. Eventually a couple driving by stopped and offered to help. I accepted and got in. Bingo! Within 10 minutes, the lost was found. I reached for my wallet, but they refused any gift beyond a heartfelt “thank you.”

However, we can assume that the good Lord was watching and will reward these “Good Samaritans” when the time is right.

A few years ago, after a four-year battle with the Internal Revenue Service, I took a shot with the Youngstown office. I won my case, with them to thank, because their answers were extremely knowledgeable, clear, concise, and immediate with common sense.

Recently, I had cause to visit the Youngstown Social Security office, and again my issue was solved in a very prompt, understanding, common-sense way.

This letter is just to recognize these offices and the people - highly professional, to the point and nice.

Youngstown Mayor Jamael Tito Brown has a lot of nerve requesting a new SUV for himself in lieu of the fact that there are many better places to put money.

Approval was given to buy this by people who are aware of the problems facing Youngstown. The old water pipes break frequently, and the street department badly needs new equipment as was made evident during our one big snow.

So, the mayor rides in a street department truck and comes up with the need for himself rather than trucks to plow the hundreds of miles of streets.

How can anybody feel justified in buying this SUV, let alone taking the money from the water department? All of us are paying indirectly for this vehicle.

The print won’t be dry on this letter before we are all notified that water rates will be increased. Use of water department money is unacceptable given the state of infrastructure and the need for equipment for the streets.

Why does nobody speak up about these actions? But, of course, why do I? It all falls on deaf ears and even voting here becomes a farce whether it’s national or local, people figure out a way to beat the system.

How sad that our great country has slipped to where we are when most people still would like to see honesty and integrity in government.

I mean to protest the removal of historical monuments celebrating the former Confederate States of America and its heroic personalities.

Since August’s white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., 43 cities have proposed removing monuments, with 18 historical markers already removed. Of course, many of these monuments celebrate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Included also is Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and Justice Roger Teney, author of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which greatly influenced historical events. These removals constitute a trampling of history.

Let it be widely noted that these statues are not racist. They were not erected with discriminatory or racist intent. They were erected to celebrate heroic figures or events. They are labeled and recorded as historical markers.

The only stain on their historicity is that they lost. That is a tarnish that now influences popular debate and action, and which may lead to a simplistic reduction of the Civil War to the notion that it was primarily about slavery. Inquiry suggests that the Civil War was just as much about the price of cotton.

Let me not diminish the slave issue. In the North, citizens organized and rallied in support of a call to free the noble slave, fueled by the escaped slave migration north..The slave states wanted escaped slaves returned. The free, or Abolitionist, states wanted slavery abolished and all farm workers paid a living wage. The slave states presumed that lodging and food was a living wage. Underneath social fabric, the factors are economic.

A collision of factors, social and economic, were not observed or understood by Southern leaders who heeded their federation’s call for service. The banner they picked up was for community and family honor first and foremost.

That they were on the losing side of a struggle, both militarily and socially, does not demean their honor, and it certainly doesn’t diminish their historical stature. Southern Confederate leaders and voices deserve their earned honor, in monument and history books.